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Thursday, February 01, 2018

We will welcome February 2018 with a delightful cava, Raventos i Blanc de Nit. This will be a year of welcoming each new month with longtime friends. This cava was a gift from one of the first friends we made after we moved to Boston. He's also one of the friends who has joined our sparkling resolution to toast each new month with a glass of bubbles.

Our friend discovered Raventos i Blanc de Nit at a Bauer Wine & Spirits tasting, loved it, and decided it was something we would also love. However, when he placed his order, there was only one bottle left in stock. Being the sweet person he is, he bought the bottle and gave it to us.

We enjoyed our New Year's bottle of a longtime favorite so much that we have decided to make 2018 a year of rediscovering some of our favorite sparkling wines from across the years. (It will also help us enjoy the wine gathering dust in our collection. In our attempt to live a healthier life, we are drinking far less wine than we used to and our collection of sparklers keeps growing.)

The last time we enjoyed this wine, we were relaxing in Provincetown and enjoying the views from a special place on a rainy day.

Whether you have seen these sparklers before or are new to our monthly feature, we'll be linking to our past posts on each of them.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

From the most casual burrito to Julia Child’s elegant “Salmon en Papillote,” food in wraps, of one kind or another, can be a great solution for entertaining.

Here's one of our favorite wrap-ups – a Vietnamese crêpe using lettuce to create the perfect bite!

On the casual side of the world of wraps, many food cultures have their own version. Think of the Italian piadina, Greek gyros, Vietnamese lettuce wraps, Mexican tacos, Indian roti, Japanese sushi, Chinese moo shi, dumplings and the list goes on and on. Many of these began as street food and the wrapper made it easy for someone to eat as they stood or walked along.

On the elegant side, we have a world of food wrapped in paper (in the case of Julia’s “en Papillote”) or in pastry as in Beef Wellington, Camembert wrapped in pastry, savory strudels, and pies enclosed in hot water crust, pizza dough, puff pastry, phyllo, or dozens of other coatings.

Quesadillas are another wrapped food.

Create a Wrap Bar

For easy entertaining you can create a wrap bar which is nothing more than a table filled with an assortment of good things to tuck inside another good thing. You can have a theme using any of the cultures mentioned above.

For example: a taco table could have tortillas, salsas, avocados, pickled onions and cabbage, meats, chopped lettuce, crema, and lime. You can offer non-meat options like sautéd zucchini, scrambled eggs, seasoned potatoes, or for a very authentic taste nopales – otherwise known as cactus paddles.

By letting everyone select and prepare their own meal, you can accommodate friends and family with many food preferences.

Here is another favorite of ours, Salmon en papillote with carrots, ginger, chives, and lemon zest peeking out of its parchment paper wrapper.

En Papillote

In Jacques Pépin’s “New Complete Techniques,” this master of cooking skills writes, “When you see ‘papillote’ on a menu in a French restaurant, you can safely assume that it describes a dish served in an envelope of parchment paper …” He goes on to explain, “When the papillote is folded correctly (it is sealed so that none of the aroma and steam can escape) it browns nicely, inflates, and the dish inside bakes in its own juices. The papillote is served directly on the serving plate and the guest opens it himself.”

If this is the only dish you learn to cook for company, you will be a relaxed chef with happy guests. You can prepare the packages hours in advance and tuck them into the refrigerator to wait for their trip to the oven.

Change-ups for different guests are easy. If salmon is on the menu, just substitute a piece of chicken for the person who doesn’t like fish. You can make a vegetarian option or one without a specific ingredient.

Your main item in the parchment paper package is topped with a selection of vegetables, herbs, and seasoning that enhance the flavor and complete the meal. With today’s prepared vegetable options in the marketplace, you don’t even have to do all the chopping and prep work. Just select your main ingredient and shop for some spiralized vegetables to add to the meal.

If folding the packages is more than you care to do, there are even parchment paper bags to make that part easier.

Most versions take less than half an hour in a hot oven and are ready to slide onto a dinner plate and present at the table.

Crêpes are another lovely wrapped meal.

Some dinner party entrées, such as Beef Wellington, take a bit of skill and cheffy work to succeed. If you have the time and the skills, this dish can be fun to make and very impressive to serve. However, there are other options that can begin with a package of pizza dough or frozen puff pastry and your imagination. So the next time it’s your turn to entertain, think about how you will wrap it up!

Sunday, January 21, 2018

You have to admire veterinarians. They have to know how to care for animals of all types from pets to exotic, wild, and working beasts. Their patients can’t tell them exactly what’s wrong and must depend on information from those who provide the day-to-day care for the animal.

We’re fortunate to have a healthy dog in Poppy, but when the time comes that she needs care, we’ll be ready to provide it.

They also depend on us to follow through with the care they prescribe. That makes you the most important caregiver of your animals. Yet, for many of us, there is a steep learning curve especially in the case of a long-term illness.

When you learn that friends are dealing with a sick pet, offer them the same support, and perhaps respite, you might give to someone caring for a sick person. They are under the same physical strain, restrictions, and stress that all caregivers face.

Here's a photo of our dear, little Maggie Mae in her younger and healthier days.

Tips for Sick Pet Care

Over the years we’ve built coping skills that are useful when a dog is sick. We have shared the work. This included sleeping on different shifts as we dealt with our Maggie Mae’s cognitive dysfunction and sleeping in street-ready clothing so we could get her outside fast, if needed.

If you are not able to share the responsibility with a family member, consider hiring someone to give you time away from the situation. Ask your veterinarian if a vet tech might be available to sit with your sick animal for a few hours. You could also check with your groomer, dog walker, or ask a friend or neighbor you would trust with the task.

If a dog was vomiting, we placed open pads in every room, ready to be quickly positioned under the dog as it began to gag. If you are not quick enough, the pads are great tools for clean up since they are designed to absorb liquids quickly.

Written records of all medications given; temperatures taken; symptoms noticed; changes in behavior, eating, drinking, and elimination are key to helping your veterinary team provide their best care. Since the days when our Sassy developed a seizure disorder, we have kept notebooks for all our dogs.

It is so nice to watch a group of healthy dogs play together in the park.

For Healthy Dogs and Cats

For all of us fortunate to have healthy animals, deciding what symptoms require a call to a vet is a prime caregiving responsibility.

You already know that you like acid in connection to food if you add a squeeze of lemon to your fish or your favorite BBQ sauce is a North Carolina style with a vinegar base. You may have a preference for wines with a good acidity or feel pickles are essential when you have a sandwich piled high with pastrami.

Around here we had an ongoing editing duel over the word acid. Penny would use the word in a draft of an article and Ed would try to replace it with a “friendlier” word, e.g. tartness. To him the word acid was unappealing.

To Penny it was exactly what she meant to say. It represented the range of flavor balancing agents she used including citrus juices, vinegars, wines, beers, fermented vegetables, and dairy products like yogurt and crème fraiche to create our favorite dishes. Our duel ended as we explored the acid chapter in “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” and we both gained a greater acceptance of the word acid as a positive part of cooking.

Exploring Acidity

The illustrations are an important part of this book. Penny thinks they should be sold as framed posters to add to kitchen decor and serve as references for cooks as they work. For example, as you can see above, acid is presented in a series of circles that lets you quickly explore the world of acid. The instructions say, “Use this wheel to help you choose which cooking acids (inner circle) and garnishing acids (outer circle) to use as you cook food from around the world.”

To add Vietnamese zest to your meal, you would cook with lime, rice wine vinegar, rice wine or beer, and garnish with fish sauce, hoisin sauce, or pickled shallots. The salad above took that Vietnamese route.

In Greece they cook with beer, wine, vinegar, or lemon, and finish with tomato, olive, yogurt, feta, or halloumi. Just knowing these selections for culture-after-culture can add excellent variation to something as simple as grilled chicken. The salad above took on that Greek character.

Recipes and Tips

In the “How Acid Works” section, you will learn how the chemistry of acid impacts things like color and texture along with tips for avoiding acid missteps. Next comes a recipe for Pasta Alle Vongole (spaghetti with clams) that demonstrates how acid works in a dish. That is followed by tips for using acid both within a dish and within a meal.

In addition to all of this, you are offered many variations. The recipe for Chicken and Garlic Soup has instructions for turning it into one of our favorite meals. Pho Ga or Vietnamese chicken noodle soup.

Remember, this is only one of four basic aspects of cooking that are explained in this book by the woman who taught Michael Pollan, New York Times bestselling author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, to cook.

In his foreword to the book Pollan wrote, “... I honestly can’t remember the last time I read a book on cooking that was this useful or unusual. I suspect that’s because reading SALT FAT ACID HEAT feels less like being in the pages of a cookbook than at a really good cooking school ..." We highly recommend this book to both experienced cooks and those who are just beginning to explore the culinary arts.

Friday, December 29, 2017

Some years we do a long search for a special sparkling wine, finding a rare bottle that we will experience for the first time. This year, at our first shopping stop, we ran into an old favorite that brought back great memories of past toasts, so we went with it – a bottle of Cuvée Rosé from Laurent-Perrier!

This is a year when we want to think about past wines as we celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Sparkling Resolution we made back in 2007 and have kept ever since. We said New Years was not often enough to toast to the good things we had experienced in the past and what we looked forward to in the future, so we should raise a glass of sparkling wine for the first of every month. For 10 years we have happily kept that resolution and many of those wines have been featured here.

By the way, while some of our featured wines are hard to find, this one is widely distributed. If you are thinking of bringing this bubbly to someone special as a New Years gift, see if you can find a bottle in the impressive copper box with a magnetic cover. It will cost $70 - $95 but is definitely worth it!

We discovered this Cuvée Rosé from Laurent-Perrier years ago at Upstairs on the Square. (Sadly now gone from the great restaurant scene.) It was on the wine list at a price that was so reasonable that we asked one of our favorite bartenders to check that it was right. It was and we enjoyed this on a number of visits over the years. It will be great to toast 2018 and our memories of the great staff and collection of regulars who shared that bar with us.

Crus: 10 different crus located mainly in the South and North areas of the Montagne de Reims – including the famous Côte de Bouzy – notably from the finest crus of Ambonnay, Bouzy, Louvois and Tours-sur-Marne.

The grapes from carefully selected plots are sorted and destemmed before vatting. The maceration – lasting from 48h to 72h depending on the harvest – helps the extraction of the colour and the development of the full aromatic richness of the Pinot Noir.

Ageing: 5 years minimum.

What the reviewers say about Cuvée Rosé from Laurent-Perrier:

"Made from 100% Pinot Noir grapes from a total of ten 100%-rated grands crus villages, this Champagne gets its glorious pink color and rounded red fruit flavors from a process known as "saigneé," in which the skins of the grapes are left in contact with the juice for three days. Laurent-Perrier's Cuvée Rosé not only makes a delicious apéritif, but is also a good match for a variety of different dishes. (Gary Westby, K&L Champagne Buyer)"

"Orange-pink in color, this dry wine has some good bottle age that has rounded the corners and allowed toast to join the red fruits and orange zest flavors. A complex background of acidity, structure and final tautness makes this wine ready to drink now."

Friday, December 01, 2017

This Champagne Paul Clouet Rosé was actually selected for a birthday toast earlier this year, but we did so much celebrating out and about that we never did open the bottle. Now we want to be sure to taste it before the year gets away from us.

Trying wines from different places, made with different grapes, and produced by different methods adds spice to our monthly ritual. Since 2007 we have raised a glass of sparkling wine to greet each new month!

Here's what our research has told us about Champagne Paul Clouet Rosé.

First of all, tasters' notes on this wine were all over the place. Ed said it made him wonder if they were all tasting the same wine. But the good news is they all liked it!

Bruce McNamee of Boutique Wines called it, "... rich and floral, perfumed with rose, raspberry, and blackcurrant ... refreshing, fruit driven Rosé d’assemblage is ideal on a warm summer [?] it is also a good dessert companion."

The review at Mel & Rose said, "I like this Champagne's marriage of power and finesse."

Over at Paul Clouet their tasting notes say, "With a nice scent of Pinot Noble, this rosé blend is a tender wine, long and racy with a delicious fruity. A wine aperitif but especially a wine that has its place throughout the meal."

As for the production notes, Paul Clouet says, "The Rosé Paul Clouet is a rosé blend, part of the red wine of Bouzy, used for the development of its Coteaux Champenois red is incorporated into a blend of white wines. The first fermentation takes place in thermoregulated stainless steel vats, ensuring optimum preservation of the primary aromas of the grapes. After this first fermentation and before bottling, approximately 12% of Bouzy red wine is incorporated into the basic blend. After the draw, the foam and aging in the cellar are done under classic corking.After disgorging, the Rosé benefits from a measured dosage and then rests for 6 months in the cellar before shipment, time necessary to allow the wine to assimilate the sugar of the liqueur of expedition and to find its equilibrium."

We purchased our bottle at City Liquors in Cambridge for ~$62. Here's the back label which will help if you're trying to find this wine in another area. When you take a photo of a wine with the hope of finding that wine for your own collection, be sure to take the BACK label as well. That one is more help to your wine merchant.

12/02/17 UPDATE with our tasting notes

With the pop of a cork, we eased out of a hectic November hoping for a calmer, quieter December and took our first sips of Paul Clouet Rosé. After a slight pause, I heard, “I am loving this wine!” Penny was right, and it only got better from there.

As the Champagne warmed (55º to 60º+) with Penny on the high end, we began to relax. This bubbly paired well with our choice of Asian food along with some bitter-sweet chocolate for dessert.

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